Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Free Agency Day 2 Headlines

Most of the newspapers focus on the enormous contracts given to Wade Redden and Michal Rozsival...

Steve Zipay at Newsday says..."Yesterday, the Rangers shored up their defense and power play by acquiring Ottawa's Wade Redden with a six-year, $39-million deal and re-signing Michal Rozsival to a four-year, $20-million contract. Meanwhile, the Rangers are one of a few teams who have offers on the table for three of the league's top free-agent wingers: Mats Sundin, Marian Hossa and Jaromir Jagr."

Sam Weinman at the Journal News notes..."But in committing such hefty salaries to those two players, Sather may have limited his flexibility when it comes to everyone else."

Larry Brooks at the New York Post laments..."Glen Sather wouldn't give Avery an extra $4M over four years - Page Six Sean is believed on his way to either Detroit or Dallas - but the GM instead lavished a six-year contract worth $6.5M per on 31-year-old Wade Redden, a reasonably dependable puck-moving defenseman who had a dreadful 2007-08 in Ottawa and has never been regarded as a game-changer over 11 seasons with the Senators."

John Dellapina at the Daily News writes..."Neither appreciably changes the personality of the Rangers defense because Redden is neither a game-breaker offensively nor a bone-breaker in front of his own net."

...doesn't look like the beat writers are happy with the signings.

...to me the signings don't make sense. Our top four wingers are free agents and Sather just spent well over half our cap space on two defensemen. Sather is quoted as saying Redden has the best first pass in the league, who exactly is Redden going to be passing to? Even if the Rangers use the rest of their cap space to get Hossa, that means we have Drury, Gomez, Hossa, a bunch of kids (Dubinsky needs to give me another year before I acknowledge him as a proven player) and a stable of fourth liners. Nice!!!!

1 comment:

bpette02 said...

Relax let's see what happens today. I think Redding is grossly overpaid but I need to see what else the Rangers do before I freak out. I'm glad they added a little size and grit with the wingers they signed, hopefully that means we've seen the last of our boy Hollweg.

I think there were a lot of bad deals made for d-man. Islanders gave $ 4.1 million for a guy who had 1 productive season and who is such a liability defensively that he played forward many games. Toronto gave Jeff Finger 3.5 million a season and this is a guy who played in 94 career games and was a healthy scratch during the play-offs.

I'm not thrilled with the Redden contract but, there were worse deals out there.